


teach me how to feel real

by girlsonthetv



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, Robot Futaba AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 05:36:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17719085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsonthetv/pseuds/girlsonthetv
Summary: Futaba Sakura was never Wakaba's daughter, however, she was the closest thing to it she had ever had.





	teach me how to feel real

Futaba’s mother no longer worked for Shido’s labs, but she still had all manner of technological memorabilia strewn about the house from various pet projects. At least a few times a week, in between shifts as an at-home IT, she would call for Futaba and sit her on her lap and show her how it all worked. How to fix a computer that wouldn’t start, how to make it do what you wanted it to do. 

Wakaba also gave Futaba The Talk, or a version of it, in any case. Futaba had always known she wasn’t really Wakaba’s daughter, but it was nice to pretend. Wakaba had always been kind to her, and Futaba thought that if she were a real girl, with flesh and bones and a heart that pumped blood through her veins to every inch of her, then she would have liked Wakaba to be her mother. 

One day, a few months after Wakaba left that laboratory with Futaba in a suitcase and never looked back, Wakaba and Futaba sat on the couch together and Wakaba briefly disabled the receptors that told Futaba something in her body was out of place. She took Futaba apart and put her back together in pieces, showing her each part of herself, telling her what it was for and how to fix it, if it became broken. Wakaba showed Futaba how to clean herself. 

How to take care of herself, if she needed to. 

“You’re beautiful, Futaba.” Wakaba told her that afternoon, smiling up at her as if the very sun shone from her eyes. “My beautiful daughter. Never let anyone tell you different.” 

“I won’t.” Futaba declared. It seemed so easy, then, to not let anyone tell her different.

/

Wakaba - her mother - was dead.

Futaba stood numb in the doorway as the strange man gave her the bad news, stumbling over his words. It was a suicide, and since she needed someone to take care of her, Futaba would be coming to live with Sojiro. That was the strange man's name. 

Wakaba showed me how to take care of myself, she wanted to say. I don’t need someone to nurture me the way real little girls do. Someone told you I was a human girl. I’m awfully sorry to disappoint.

An awkward silence developed between them as Futaba took an anxious step back. "Do... do you need help packing your things?" 

"No." She said softly, and Sojiro looked startled, as if he didn't realize she could talk. 

She moves around the house on silent feet as Sojiro stands awkwardly in the doorway, folding the dress Wakaba had her wear whenever she took her out in public to cover the steel joints, the power light on her chest, all the obvious tells that she was not real. She gathered the anime DvDs Wakaba had bought her to watch while she was working, the stories of heroes wearing bright suits and defeating evils with the power of optimism. They never failed to enchant her and liven her dullest days. Futaba wondered if they would hold the same gleam now. 

She didn't make a sound as she found a carpetbag to put these things in, and she didn't make a sound as she padded into Wakaba's old room, and she didn't make a sound as she climbed up onto Wakaba's bed and pressed her face into her pillow. She was a Reconnaissance model, built for stealth - no one could hear anything she did unless she wanted them to. 

She could, in theory, stay here as long as she wanted to. In practice, Sojiro would eventually come looking for her. She stayed there for as long as she dared - maybe a few minutes - before getting up and going to Sojiro's car. 

/

The days at Sojiro’s house passed without incident. Futaba asked if she could work in the coffee shop, wanting to be useful, wanting to do something other than sit in the house all day and do what she did best. Being quiet and not making a nuisance of herself. 

Sojiro said no, citing child labor laws and how young she looked. “I don’t want to get investigated.” He said apologetically. 

Futaba could have passed herself off as his niece come to visit, but she suspected that she freaked Sojiro out; the stiff way she moved, her monotone voice, the lack of emotion on her face. He didn’t want to look at her more than necessary. She couldn’t blame him.

So she stayed in her room and messed around on the old computer Sojiro had loaned her to give her something to do. She taught herself how to hack into other computers, how to get into their workings and make them spill whatever information she wanted. 

Futaba wasn’t sure why she was so fascinated by this, specifically. There was a burgeoning emotion blooming in Futaba’s chest, a little ember of fury burning deep inside her. She wanted to lash out, wanted to make others feel her presence in the world, wanted to crush the leaves on the sidewalk and let the birds and squirrels know she was there. She was built to be quiet, and she was sick and tired of being quiet. 

/

Years passed. By the time Akira had come to town, Futaba’s burgeoning emotions, rotting in the depths of her heart, had congealed into something so horrid she nearly choked on it.

The night before she was considering killing herself, removing her central processing unit and transforming herself into naught but a body, she learned of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. She drank down the rumors of them reforming wicked people by digging deep into their souls and reshaping them like sweet ambrosia, and she wondered if maybe - just maybe - they could find a soul inside her cold, corpse-like body. 

She contacted them, introduced herself as Alibaba, begged them to help her, and they did. They successfully pulled off a heist on her Palace and transformed her. When they left, she felt raw, tender, like an open wound. Then she slept for a very long time. Ironically enough, the moment she discovered her own humanity was the moment the Phantom Thieves - or rather, the other Phantom Thieves - found out she was a robot. 

The last thing she heard before entering sleep mode was the loud, mechanical tone that signaled her entering sleep mode. The last thing she saw was the leader, Joker, looking at Skull askance. She woke up maybe a week later and went downstairs to find Sojiro explaining to the Phantom Thieves, her new friends, the nature of the girl they had rescued. 

"Then... how can she have a Persona?" Panther - no, Ann - asked bemusedly. 

"It doesn't matter." Joker declared. He saw Futaba hovering uncertainly at the bottom of the stairs. "Welcome to the group." 

And that, as they say, was that. Futaba immersed herself in research on the strange phenomena of the Metaverse and Shadows, and discovered an incident on Port Island some years before she was made. A Kirijo Group, a line of Anti-Shadow weapons who had Personae, one in particular that was instrumental in defeating the outbreak of Shadows on Port Island. She was known to her friends as Aigis.  
Futaba read the old reports about Aigis over and over again, consuming them like a starving man. Every time she read Aigis' name, she felt overwhelmed by compassion and love for this woman she had never met, this woman like her. 

She was not alone, she never was alone, not as the earliest prototype for the Reconnaissance models, not as the motherless daughter, not as the robot who had enough spirit to conjure forth a Persona. She would never be alone ever again. She knew this like she knew the inner workings of her body, taught to her by Wakaba so very long ago.


End file.
